One month ago I completed my second triathlon (sprint distance). In preparation for this I was training about 10 hours a week. I ended up placing quite well and got myself hooked on triathlon.
I am a college student and start classes next week. I have planned out my schedule and found that I have a lot of free time. I want to dedicate this time to training. I could definitely do 20-25 hours of training a week. I am interested in competing in Olympic and Half distances next season.
My question is, how do I decide how to spend this time? During my previous training I made up my own training plan and it proved to work well but I know I’m not spending my time as efficiently as I could. Do most people make up their own training plan? Should I buy a plan online? Should I get a coach?
I was in the same boat as you 9 years ago. Picked up triathlon as a freshmen in college. First off, ease up and don’t dive into 20 hours of training per week and hurt yourself just because you are full of motivation (like I did, plantar fasciitis, etc). The best thing I did was pick up some books from reputable coaches. The one that helped me the most was “Your Best Triathlon - Joe Friel”. This teaches you how to balance and structure training. Then, take advantage of the college schedule. You have free time and breaks through the day. When I had a two hour break between classes I went to the pool and then lunch. It was a great way to give yourself a mental break.
Buy an 80/20 endurance plan for training peaks, level 3 based on your goals, and get to work. I’m on my second go around with a 70.3 plan and it’s awesome. Have also done one an Olympic plan as well from them.
You don’t need to train 20 hours a week. That’s semi pro or completely obsessed with no life type level of training. You’ll get damn fit from the 80/20 plans and blow your PRs out of the water.
Buy an 80/20 endurance plan for training peaks, level 3 based on your goals, and get to work. I’m on my second go around with a 70.3 plan and it’s awesome. Have also done one an Olympic plan as well from them.
You don’t need to train 20 hours a week. That’s semi pro or completely obsessed with no life type level of training. You’ll get damn fit from the 80/20 plans and blow your PRs out of the water.
You could do much worse than a generic 80/20 plan. Instead of buying a single plan for $75 on training peaks, you can buy the book on amazon for $15 and it has all of the plans in it.
Buy an 80/20 endurance plan for training peaks, level 3 based on your goals, and get to work. I’m on my second go around with a 70.3 plan and it’s awesome. Have also done one an Olympic plan as well from them.
You don’t need to train 20 hours a week. That’s semi pro or completely obsessed with no life type level of training. You’ll get damn fit from the 80/20 plans and blow your PRs out of the water.
You could do much worse than a generic 80/20 plan. Instead of buying a single plan for $75 on training peaks, you can buy the book on amazon for $15 and it has all of the plans in it.
Yes, for the poor college student who has more time than money, you can get the book which has multiple plans, for $15.
As an approaching middle-ager with more money and less time now though, the spluruge on both the $75 plan and the Trainingpeaks annual fee is pretty nice, and I think worth it. You can move your workouts around, it sends the workouts to your watch or bike computer or software so the steps are all there for you if you like doing the workouts as is.
Particularly good for indoor training, as you don’t have to ‘make’ your own workouts - it’s sent straight to your Garmin, or software (like TrainerDay phone app)
Buy an 80/20 endurance plan for training peaks, level 3 based on your goals, and get to work. I’m on my second go around with a 70.3 plan and it’s awesome. Have also done one an Olympic plan as well from them.
You don’t need to train 20 hours a week. That’s semi pro or completely obsessed with no life type level of training. You’ll get damn fit from the 80/20 plans and blow your PRs out of the water.
You could do much worse than a generic 80/20 plan. Instead of buying a single plan for $75 on training peaks, you can buy the book on amazon for $15 and it has all of the plans in it.
https://www.amazon.com/80-Triathlon-Breakthrough-Elite-Training-Performance/dp/0738234680I actually started off with the book, read it front to back, and loved it, but did not like having to translate the different workouts. For example: Monday RCI4 and CF2 are your workouts. Well ok flip to the back of the book to the index and figure out the specifics of said workouts and your good to go. It gets old quick.
The advantage of buying a plan is that they are lifetime, meaning “buy once, cry once”. They are also updated yearly, at least at this point. When I re-applied my 70.3 plan for a second time there were some minor changes from last year when I did it.
All the workouts automatically sync to your watch, head units, zwift, etc. So you wake up and your workouts are ready to go, leading you step by step. I like that, keeps me honest and I can focus on other aspects of my life rather than the nitty gritty of what I need to do that day to pull my workouts off. Just start your watch/head unit and start the workout, boom.
And in theory one could take these structured workouts and create their own plan in the future if something with the way they are created doesn’t work for you. It’s a fantastic resource in and of itself just for use in training peaks. When I was in between races I copied and pasted the structured workouts I wanted to do and created my own transitional plan. Worked great.
I think all of that is worth the cost of admission.
If your school has a triathlon club, join it. If no club on campus, search for one in the area. Ask members for guidance. Compare and contrast to what you learn there to here. Libraries are great free resources for tri knowledge. Seek out some AI too for training plan ideas. Set a budget for your triathlon race journey needs to determine if the money is there for free or purchased training plans, and/or a coach. Study hard, do well on tests, enjoy training, race smart, and have fun!
It depends on how interested you are in learning training theory and spending time and effort creating a plan for yourself. If this interests you there are nearly infinite resources for learning this - books, podcasts, forums, etc. A book is a great place to start (Scientific Training for Endurance Athletes by Skiba, The Well-Built Triathlete by Dixon, The Triathlete’s Training Bible by Friel are all good). The podcast That Triathlon Show has tons of good content to supplement knowledge from a book. Talk to other people you meet about what they’re doing, read Slowtwitch topics about training, listen to interviews with coaches, look at people’s Strava, etc. There is so much to absorb and after a few years of this you’ll have a very good sense of the spectrum of what people are doing and have plenty of ideas to try for yourself.
If that seems too overwhelming, maybe start with a training plan or hire a coach. My college triathlon team had team plans focused on preparing for Collegiate Nationals from two different coaches during my years. That certainly helped supplement my book learning in my early years and was super valuable in helping me learn how to plan my own training.
If none of that sounds interesting at all and all you want to do is train, hire a coach who will tell you exactly what to do every day. There are downsides to this though in my opinion if you don’t still work to understand things yourself.
Swimming: Find a team, group, Master class and swim as much as you can. Don’t swim hard without getting the stroke right. Find a good swimming coach - and make it your most important sessions of the week. Learn how to swim good as soon as possible, it’s a skill you’ll have for the rest of your life.
Running: Run slow - search for ‘BarryP’ here on the Forum. Steady progression - slow it down in training.
Bike: Bike as much as you can and go hard 1-2 every week. If you’re too tired to be 100% on the swimming and/or running, you biked too much or too hard.
Don’t spend money on a plan or a Triathlon coach - spend it on your swimming… The BarryP plan is bulletproof until you can run 70-80k a week for a year with no niggles.
As others have stated, you don’t need 20-25 hours a week to train as that is seriously heavy hours for an age grouper.
Lots of good suggestions already in terms of plans etc.
My message would be to think about commitment to triathlon as a long term lifestyle change. It is common to see new people come to the sport, go all in and emerge 1-2 seasons later burnt out and injured and not loving the sport anymore. Have a longer term view on things. Enjoy the process. Think of your training as like making a cake, the bigger foundation the better you will be and that means lots of lower intensity work and the high intensity stuff is like the icing on your cake. That foundation can be built on year on year. Most newer triathletes tend to do the opposite, lots of high intensity stuff and minimal low intensity work and then overtrain, underperform and don’t enjoy the sport.
Good luck!
In the beginning, I would stick to your 10 hr/week plan, and use the surplus time to work on your weakness, if you have any. For some is swimming technique, for some is running economy etc. Those improvements, then, will stay with you forever; once done that, you can focus on engine development